Planned Parenthood closes Hays clinic after ruling

Organization cites Kansas law for loss of services

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WICHITA — Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri announced Friday it plans to close its Hays health center to save its larger Wichita clinic in the wake of an appeals court ruling that let Kansas strip its federal family planning funding.

The organization also said it would no longer be able to provide free contraceptives and other no-cost medical services to low-income patients in Wichita without the federal money, but community donations will allow it to still offer affordable health care.

Court documents show the two nonprofit clinics were operating at a loss even before losing the $330,000 annual influx of funds from Title X, a federally financed family planning program. The Title X money targets low-income people seeking such reproductive services as birth control, pregnancy testing, cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. It can’t be used for abortions.

The Hays center will continue seeing patients until June 26, and the facility will close its doors on June 30. Its closure leaves Ellis County without a Title X health care provider. The clinic manager and a nurse practitioner will lose their jobs in Hays, but no staff cuts are planned at the Wichita facility.

Interim CEO Ron Ellifrits said Planned Parenthood has provided health care in Kansas for more than 75 years and won’t let the changes keep it from staying committed to high-quality affordable health care.

“We’re still here for our patients, and we are fighting every day to maintain, restore, or expand access to health care in Kansas despite all the obstacles in our path,” Ellifrits said in a written statement. “The generous support of private individuals across the state, as well as the difficult decision to close our health center in Hays, will allow Planned Parenthood to continue providing services for as many Kansas women and men as possible while Kansas lawmakers continue to play politics with women’s health.”

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said Friday its staff is working to find additional family planning services and looking at other options as it determines awards of one-year contracts for Title X providers in the state.

“We don’t want people to miss the services that they need,” said Tim Keck, deputy chief counsel for KDHE. “We have staff that works on this on a daily basis and we are working to continue to manage the situation.”

Planned Parenthood’s move comes after a sharply divided panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March overturned a federal judge’s ruling that had temporarily kept Planned Parenthood’s funding intact while the organization challenged a Kansas law. That law required the state to first allocate Title X money to public health departments and hospitals, leaving no funds for specialty family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood subsequently dropped its legal challenge to the state law.

More than 5,700 people receive health care services at the Hays and Wichita clinics. Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas have provided more than 9,000 birth control visits each year, as well as 3,000 breast exams and pap tests, and 18,000 tests for sexually transmitted diseases, according to court documents.

Last year, Planned Parenthood used Title X money to provide medical services to more than 3,700 low-income patients at its health centers in Wichita and Hays, including the 3,315 of those patients getting health care services at its Wichita clinic.

“We will work with all of our patients to provide assistance and we will continue to be there for them,” Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri spokeswoman Elise Higgins said. “But, because of that politically motivated decision, we will no longer be able to use Title X funds to provide health care for free as of June 1.”

Low-income patients will still be able to get birth control pills at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Wichita, but will have to pay as little as $12 rather than getting them for free, Higgins said. The out-of-pocket cost for the pills can be as much as $50.

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When will the KochBrothers and their merry band of free-loading wealthy/corporate-aires stop playing politics? One suggestion might be when we get money out of politics ... "wolf-pac.com" and "move to amend.org." Or, stop electing Republicans until they clean-up their act.

"Another obstacle for women who want to be responsible for their sex lives."

You mean "Another obstacle for women who want taxpayers to be responsible for paying for their promiscuous sex lives."?

Fact #1) No contraceptive is 100% guaranteed to prevent pregnancy. For anyone who willingly engages in sex to be completely "responsible", they would realize this, and accept responsibility for the consequences, should the method fail.

"Most men won't take precautions."

Fact #2) Unless the woman is (God forbid) forced, it's still up to the woman about what she allows. It's her decision to willingly have sex. It's her "responsibility" to make sure she has purchased her low-cost birth control or that "he" shares the cost, and that he wears protection. Still, it's no guarantee. So, it's the "responsibility" of both to accept the financial and emotional consequences of things not working.

" The government makes it harder for women. "

Fact #3) No, it doesn't. "The government" (the taxpayers) are NOT responsible for the personal decisions, or the consequences, of any woman who willingly engages in sex. SHE, and she alone, is responsible.

You want "government out of your bedrooms"? Then...quit dragging us into them!

Liberals have absolutely no concept of what "responsibility" actually is.

Now, then...having pointed out the obvious truths, I have no problem using taxpayer dollars to help women who have actually been victimized...even to the point of a possible abortion. Or, helping any woman of low income who has medical problems not related to promiscuous activity. That's where I draw the line, as a fair and compassionate person.

To a liberal, "responsibility" means "someone else is always responsible...not the person willingly making the decision to subject themselves to possible negative consequences".

I know some of you will vehemently disagree. Shirking personal responsibility is a hallmark of being a liberal.

"It used to Take a family to raise a child Not the WHOLE DAMN VILLAGE!"

When was this?

When I was growing up, for example, one of the things that kept me in line was the notion that if I misbehaved out of my parents' sight, somebody was going to go tell them. Mrs. Olson the neighbor lady might say something sharp to me, but after she told my parents, then I was really in trouble. Was it different when you were growing up?

See, that's the theme of Mrs. Clinton's book: kids are influenced by neighbors, by teachers, by books and music and video, by events and persons outside their home. The only kids raised exclusively by their family, without any outside influence, are the kids who are socially isolated and never attend school or church or participate in the wider world at all. That's never been the case for any significant number of American children at any point in our nation's history--schools and churches were among the very first institutions created on the frontier.

When those outside influences strengthen children's moral and intellectual development, the nation prospers; when those outside influences don't, we don't. That's the theme of her book, and I've never understood why that is so threatening to many American conservatives.

There is NOTHING that is going to prevent the ongoing services that are funded for low-income women for birth control, pregnancy testing, cancer screenings and STD treatment under Title X. All that will change is that the 2 Planned Parenthood clinics will not be service delivery agents. The facts are that these 2 particular clinics have been financially struggling for some time and had been operating in the red and were not sustainable anyway.

Furthermore, Planned Parenthood has created their own issues over the past many years by their promotion and support of abortions, and, in many cases throughout the United States, have involved themselves directly with abortion services. Because these Planned Parenthood clinics depend upon and receive Title X funding they are also mandated to be in compliance with the federal laws attached to that funding; abortion services are excluded and funding for such is NOT allowed under this FEDERAL funded law.

Kansas law requires the state to first allocate Title X funding to public health facilities and hospitals who already provide a plethora of public health services to the indigent. After allocation, there was no funding available for distribution to other non-public health facilities.
Not one woman is being deprived of the SERVICES funded under Title X and their ability to receive those services; the only change will be WHERE they go to receive those services. The areas effected by the closure of the 2 Planned Parenthood clinics will be replaced by another viable alternative within the area and until that time are available in close proximity by other facilities. There is NO plan to leave the areas without direct service delivery.

So, those who choose to make this a women's issue for politically charged agendas may, of course, do so. However, the FACTS do NOT support that agenda; therefore, the Democratic mantra is false and those using it as a tool for that purpose are disingenuous and are knowingly prostituting the issue along with the women they supposedly claim they are representing.

On what basis do you conclude another viable alternative within the area will step up?

Currently, there are no other facilities in Hays, or Ellis County, receiving Title X funding, nor am I aware of any that have applied. If a woman lives in Hays and doesn't have ready access to transportation outside the county, what are her options?

Ellis County Health Dept, e.g., has not been providing birth control services; they refer patients to Planned Parenthood. Do you have some inside information that they are going to take over that function, or are you just hoping or assuming they will?

Slash, it almost appears as though you have read a condensed book flap overview of 'It Takes A Village' rather than having actually read the book itself. Anyone who has read Hillary's book knows that while there are some basic philosophies anyone can agree upon, the overall premise of this book is quite obvious. If the book had dedicated itself to the premise that raising a child involves enjoined efforts of school, church or faith, neighborhood supports, etc, then there never would have been the controversy over the premise actually promoted by Hillary in this book.

In other words, Hillary's entire projection is that the 'village' is much more than just the communities in which we live but is best realized by continued expansion of government into all areas of our lives. While she offers very nurturing stories and emotional appeal throughout the book she also integrates these stories with the assertions that government should be utilized in the role of raising children. This is obvious by how every problem and/or concern presented in the book is responded to by promoting a government program and/or government funded community program.

This, the premise of endorsing socialist programs, has been clearly the issue of obvious contention and controversy regarding Hillary's book. It is her promotion that the government should involve itself with the early maternal influence of it's children because the 'government' can do a better job of raising it's children rather than their parents. The problem is the message of the book; that children are basically the responsibility of the 'village' which she uses as a metaphor for the 'state, the government'.

For example, she proposes, in the book, that a national agenda for education rather than local control of education should be embraced. She states her belief that national enhancement of education through such programs as Goals 2000, School-to-Work programs, Head Start, Zero to Three, HIPPY, Parent Education Program, Healthy Start, Children's Defense Fund, Parents as Teachers and the Carnegie Council on Children are the answers for the educational 'model'.

To have read the book and not have noticed the continual answers to each problem addressed in the book by Hillary involves a government program and government solution is simply impossible. This flawed premise, that a government is the 'village' is exactly why the book raised vehement controversy. Her premise that parents must rely upon government law makers and federally funded programs to raise their children is a socialist mentality and philosophy that posed understandable outrage in a republic such as the United States. A republic where value is placed on less government versus more government.

While everyone is able to agree, in a limited fashion, that it takes families, neighbors, churches, communities, etc., to raise a child, it does not mean it takes a government to raise a child. And, furthermore, parents do not need the government involved to raise and set the precedent for the way their children are raised.

Read the book, Slash; and, if you did read the book, you obviously need a refresher.

The "plans" I've heard is that KDHE is frantically trying to find some entity out in/near Hays willing to work with Title X funding, and so far is having no luck whatsoever, because the Ellis County commissioners (as with several other county commissions in Kansas) want no part of it. If you've heard differently, please let us know where you are hearing this.

One can disagree with the specifics of Hillary Clinton's proposals and still agree with the general notion that it does take a combined effort of society to raise a child. Much of the rhetoric against her book was specifically aimed at the idea that ANYBODY other than the parents/family had any role at all. Bob Dole's famous line, for example, was "“It does not take a village to raise a child; it takes a family to raise a child." Note that there is nothing in that statement to indicate any kind of role for church, or school, or community/neighborhood.

This hearkens back to very traditional views of family, in which children are literally the property of their parents. (You will recall that one of the very first criminal prosecutions for child abuse in the U.S. occurred only in 1874; the notion that "busybodies" had the right to tell a father what he could and could not do to his children was at the time seen as alien and un-American.)